1. Much of it is held overseas so treating it as one big lump sum is incorrect and silly. 2, Leverage for loans and bonds. 3, Purchases, not of companies - of

1. Much of it is held overseas so treating it as one big lump sum is incorrect and silly. 2, Leverage for loans and bonds. 3, Purchases, not of companies - of supply lines. They are the best in the industry at that. 4, Buybacks of stock (see 2) 5. Continued survival should the market change drastically and they lose their core profitable business (iPhone). 6. R&D and manufacture of new product lines. Cars, TVs, whatever. Takes capital - then also requires expenditure to lock up supplies (see 3) 5 is especially important as they've been there before - they want the ability to still move strongly even if they are not profitable in the same way. Basically it's a 10-20 year view rather than Wall Street's 1-3 year view (and I'm being charitable, Wall Street is more like a 3-12month view most of the time, at least with Tech stocks)